Sambora gets personal with new solo effort

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You'd think Richie Sambora would have wanted to take a break after Bon Jovi's 68-date arena stint in North America and Europe last year, a massive tour that nabbed the second spot on Billboard's annual Top 25 list and grossed over $190 million.

But the guitarist says just the opposite is true. Despite having been absent for nearly a month of the outing due time in rehab for exhaustion and alcoholism (he was temporarily replaced by guitarist Philip Xenidis), Sambora says when that “amazing” tour was over, he was inspired to get right to work on his aptly titled third solo album, “Aftermath of the Lowdown,” released in September.

“One of the first songs I wrote was ‘Seven Years Gone,' ” he recalled during a recent phone interview, digging deep into all he had been through. It's a long list of turmoil: a divorce from actress Heather Locklear, his wife of a dozen years; becoming a single dad to his daughter Ava; living through tabloid scrutiny when he started dating Denise Richards; the passing of his father, Adam, from lung cancer in 2007; and an arrest for DUI in Laguna Beach in 2008.

While Sambora was still experiencing all the success in the world via his band, personally things had fallen apart.

“Seven years later, I'm sitting here and everything is great,” he says. “I'm feeling healthier than I've ever felt in my life and I just started to look back on the journey. All of that became the template of what this record was to become.

It wasn't easy, he says, to share so much in song, but he poured his soul into tracks like “You Can Only Get So High,” written straight out of rehab, and “I'll Always Walk Beside You,” penned for his now 14-year-old daughter.

“You ask yourself how vulnerable do you want to be. I think you get to a point in your life where you're comfortable enough with who you are and you can just be authentic. That was my whole reason for making this record. I wanted it to be authentic and not have there be too much between the music and the man.”

The album isn't all gloomy, however. Sambora says most of the lyrics, filled with optimism and triumph, were about him emerging on the other side of his issues.

The 53-year-old recently returned from a sold-out solo tour in Europe and will perform tonight at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, a gig that will partly help relief efforts on the East Coast.

As a New Jersey native, Sambora, who resides in Los Angeles, says that seeing the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy has been heartbreaking. The house he purchased for his mother in Point Pleasant Beach, for instance, was destroyed.

“We had a lot of water in the house and she's out living with me now for a few months,” he says. “I couldn't make it out there for the telethon because all of the planes were still messed up, so at my (Fonda) show I'm donating a portion of my (ticket sales) and I'm going to match that and give it to the Red Cross in my home state.

Sambora has written songs and produced hits alongside lifelong friend Jon Bon Jovi for almost three decades, creating arena-rock staples out of “Wanted Dead or Alive,” “Livin' on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “It's My Life.” (All of those and more can be seen and heard in a new concert film, “Bon Jovi Inside Out,” that plays cinemas countywide on Nov. 27.)

The pair also took their place alongside Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach and more legends when they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009.

“That's probably my most favorite award,” he says. “I've gotten stuff from MTV, People's Choice Awards, CMT Awards – I've been blessed. Oh, and the Grammy Awards, I have a couple of those and they're wonderful because it comes from your peers.

“But the Songwriters Hall of Fame … to me, the craft of songwriting is the foundation of music. It's why people attach themselves to music and attach their lives to what we do. To be recognized by (the people) who vote for the Songwriters Hall of Fame … they're giants of the industry, guys I looked up to, so that was an amazing award to get.”

Sambora is passionate about capturing life at the moment. He rarely relies on old material or taps into past emotions when sitting down to write. When it comes time to work on new Bon Jovi songs, he and Jon collaborate in the same room to crank out ideas, yet though the two share similar backgrounds, Sambora says their writing styles are vastly different.

“Jon and I are very close, and we are very close in age and grew up five miles from each other. But we're still two very different people. There are things he says that I might not ever say, but he being the mouthpiece of the band and me being the mouthpiece of my own project – it's a lot different. I think I might be a little more edgy, maybe even a little bit more vulnerable. Maybe it's because of all of the media scrutiny I've been through in my life, but I've learned that it's just a part of the roller-coaster ride to fame and something you have to deal with.”

He says the rest of the band has been supportive of his endeavors, including two previous albums, “Stranger in This Town” (1991) and “Undiscovered Sun” (1998). It took 14 years for him to produce new solo material, but he says occasional creative breaks from the main band are what have sustained Bon Jovi for so long.

“A band is like a marriage, and if you're in a marriage with someone and you lose yourself in that marriage, the relationship is over, really,” he explains. “I think everybody has to have their own individual projects besides just being together all the time. I think everybody knows I give good band – I've been in the same band for 30 years. I think it's time for people to notice me on my own.”

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